Controlling 3 Servos With The Servo:Lite board

By default the Servo:Lite board for the :MOVE mini buggy kit is capable of driving its 5 ZIP LEDs in conjunction with two servos. In this resource for the Servo:Lite board we are going to cover how you can ‘hack’ the board to facilitate the driving of three servos.

It’s important to note that we included this as a feature and as such we ensured that not only is the ‘hack’ very easy to do, it is also easy to reverse. Also, the ‘hack’ disables the onboard ZIP LEDs, reversing the ‘hack’ re-enables the ZIP LEDs again.

Both the ZIP LEDs and the servos are controlled from outputs on the microbit. The Servo:Lite board only breaks out P0, P1 and P2 to drive things. So, if we want three servos we need to disable the ZIP LEDs.

As you can see in the above image, the ‘hack’ is a simple three step process;

1. Create a soldered joint across the two pads on the front of the board.
2. Break the track between the two pads on the rear of the board.
3. Add 3 x 0.1” header pins to the board for the extra servo to connect to.

To return a ‘hacked’ board back to its original state just reverse the process;